At present, functions of a mobile phone become increasingly powerful, and a photo shooting function of a mobile phone also becomes increasingly powerful. However, storage space of a mobile phone is limited. Therefore, most of various mobile phone manufacturers provide a cloud server or a web disk for a user to store data such as a photo and an address book.
A Communication as a Service (CaaS) software development kit (SDK) is an application software development platform, and a telecommunication capability such as Voice over Internet Protocol VoIP, instant messaging, file sharing, picture sharing, or audio and video conferencing is open to the outside by using an application programming interface (API) interface. This solution is developed based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). In a current picture sharing solution, after a user of a source terminal selects a local file, the source terminal invokes an API interface provided by an SDK to send the file. The file may be sent in two manners. In one manner, when a rich communication suite (RCS) server is configured in a store-and-forward mode, the local file is first sent to the RCS server, that is, an RCS server of an operator on a live network, and after the RCS server finishes receiving the local file, the RCS server sends the file to a receiver. In the other manner, when the RCS server is configured in a point-to-point mode, after a destination terminal receives a content sharing request and choose to accept the request, the file may be sent to the receiver by using the RCS server without waiting for the file to be completely sent to the RCS server.
In the foregoing technical solution, when the RCS server is configured in the store-and-forward mode, it is necessary to wait for shared content to be completely sent to the server, and then the server instructs a user to receive the shared content. In this way, time required from sending the shared content by a sender to receiving the shared content by a receiver is excessively long, thereby affecting user experience. When the RCS server is configured in the point-to-point mode, the server instructs the receiver to receive the file without waiting for the shared content to be completely sent by the sender, which reduces time when compared with time used in the store-and-forward mode. However, this process relies on network environments of two parties, and a relative slow network speed of either party affects total transfer time of a sharing process.